SOCIAL SCULPTURE

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Social Sculpture is a next generation large scale social change methodology that uses art, play, and other means of cultural engagement for social healing and renewal.

Magenta combines extensive multi-stake-holder experience with artistic competency and an ongoing focus on how shifts in culture and mindset are crucial to real, posi-tive, and lasting social change.

Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present, New York.

YOU’RE A FORCE OF NATURE

If you’re a leader working to heal, transform, or enliven a community, a town, or a whole region that has su�ered violence, oppression, or similar forms of breakdown for decades or even centuries, Social Sculpture could be ideal for you.

Social Sculpture is designed to engage thousands or millions of people in collective cultural experiences for massive social renewal and healing. It is the art of engaging people inwardly in a transformation of meaning and trauma at the root cause of societal dysfunction.

CULTURE AS SOLUTION

Where do our most complex, most troubling challenges come from? War, poverty, pollution, poor health, urban decay, species loss, racism — these and many other problems resist most change e�orts. Why is this so?

It’s because their root causes are “in us.” These problems are expressions of the mindsets, beliefs, ideas, and traumas passed from generation to generation. As a result, these challenges can last for decades or even centuries.

What does this mean for real change?

These challenges evolve at exactly the same pace as dominant mindsets shift and age-old wounds heal. This is normally a slow process, taking decades or even centuries.

We need a way to use the power of culture to accelerate culture and mindset change for the social good. Social Sculpture is a methodology for doing just that.

Supaman, Prayer Loop, Youtube

An important key to e�ectively addressing large scale social challenges is finding the true causes of the challenge. If you don’t, the challenge will resist your solutions, because those causes remain in e�ect. The severest social challenges are only symptoms of these true causes, which lie deep in a society’s culture, identities, traumas, and guiding ideas. Systems thinking calls these causes mental models or paradigms.

Put another way: the symptoms of the challenge express on the surface, while the root causes of the challenge are deeply lodged in mindset and culture. Social Sculpture uses art, play, awareness, and other cultural means to engage and stimulate movement and change at the level of root causes in paradigm and mindset.

While the results of a Social Sculpture intervention vary widely, the goal is to engage a society’s collective mental and emotional planes in specific actions of cultural, political, and economic renewal. This isn’t “art for art’s sake;” it’s cultural activity that aims to achieve specific movement in historically stuck situations.

CHANGE THE UNDERLYING PATTERN

Some of Mayor Edi Rama’s artistic renovations in Tirana, Albania

PHASE ONE: STARTING POINTS

SET INTENT AND DIRECTION

INTERVIEW SOCIAL PRACTICE ARTISTS

STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS

SHARED UNDERSTANDING

CRAFT GUIDING NARRATIVE

PHASE TWO: MOMENTUM

MEASURE BASELINE CONDITIONS

ITERATIVE CYCLES & SMALL EXPERIMENTS

TRAINING CREATIVITY COMPETENCY

DEVELOPING CAPABILITIES

CROSSING THE GAP

HUNT FOR EMERGING SOLUTIONS

THE BEST SOLUTION REVEALS ITSELF

SCALE & PROPAGATE IN CONTEXT

MANAGE MEDIA EXPOSURE

MEASURE CHANGES & WRAP UP

PHASE THREE: SOLUTIONS

Social sculpture is a hybrid of multi-stakeholder collaboration (bringing together problem owners from many di�erent sectors of society), social art practice (art designed to bring attention to social issues), and social threefolding (a body of research and practice that prioritizes cultural factors in understanding and renewing society).

Although every endeavor is unique, we take our partners and clients through three phases, each of which we adapt to your particular situation.

OVERVIEW

PHASE ONE: STARTING POINTS

In the initial phase of a Social Sculpture project, we help key stakeholders find a common direction, develop a shared and rich understanding of their situation, and identify initial ideas and possible solutions they want to pursue. There are five key components of this phase.

The first step is to set the project’s intent and strategic direction. We help project initiators articulate and clarify their motivation, and we teach them about the Social Sculpture approach so that we begin the endeavor with a clear and shared understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish, and by what means.

As we build our team, we expand our shared understanding of the situation and its root causes. The goal is for the project team to share a multi-faceted view of the underlying traumas, beliefs, and other cultural factors that manifest as problematic symptoms in the issue area.

1.1 1.2

Next, we enroll key stakeholders from across the system or region who will support, advise, and legitimize, in the eyes of their constituencies, the entire e�ort.

1.3

Set Intent & Strategic Direction Stakeholder Relationships Shared Understanding

Social Practice Artists Craft the Guiding Narrative

PHASE ONE: STARTING POINTS

We interview qualified social practice artists to play important roles in the proj-ect team. These artists will discover and prototype the precise cultural interven-tions that will drive change at large scales.

Work begins to craft the project’s guiding narrative, which we will continually refine, gradually communicate with a wider audience, and use to enroll the communi-ty in the project’s aims in a later phase.

1.4 1.5

After Phase One, we have a diverse group of stakeholders who share a rich, multifaceted understanding of the situation, a team of experienced social practice artists keen to play key roles, and the project narrative for comunications e�orts.

A great start!

Next up: small experiments help us discover how we can make big impact.

PHASE TWO: SMALL EXPERIMENTS

The second phase of Social Sculpture conducts what we call “small experiments.” These are ideas and prototypes for interventions at scale that help us find what will actually work to shift the mindsets, paradigms, and traumas at the heart of the challenge. There are five key steps in this stage.

After that, the main focus of this phase is building momentum as a whole project team comprised of stakeholders and artists. We set up a physical “social sculpture studio” in which we conceive and design possible intervention strategies.

The second phase begins with identifying and measuring key indicators that help us understand our starting conditions. What are we trying to change, and how will we know when we’re making real progress? We establish key baseline metrics about the current reality that we can continue to observe and track as we move forward.

2.1 2.2

In the Studio, we marry the expertise and experience of social practice artists with the knowledge, leverage, and experience of leaders and stakeholders. We help the project team “find their flow” in iterative cycles of small experiments.

Each cycle combines design, creative work, reflection, learning, and improving ideas. The result: first ideas for cultural interventions that could profoundly shift the issue area’s driving causes.

2.3

Measure Baseline Conditions Social Sculpture Studio Iterative Cycles & Small Experiments

To support this interdisciplinary research, we support the project team with training and capability develop-ment.

Collaboration is hard in any situation; our focus at this point is to support healthy, productive collaboration in an optimal working environment. We help artists and change leaders work together with minimum conflict and maximum e�cacy.

We begin to leverage the influence of the stakeholder group to share our project’s narrative to other leaders and influencers (including, as needed, the policy and busi-ness cases for the project).

We also secure the necessary legal advice, insurance, and legal permission for the specific interventions emerging in the Studio, and make sure that important discoveries in this stage modify our work in the Studio.

Finally, we identify and connect with the appropriate media channels so that we are ready to tell the story of the project and what the community may expect.

2.4 2.5

Training & Capability Development Prepare to Launch

PHASE TWO: SMALL EXPERIMENTS

PHASE THREE: INTERVENTIONS AT SCALE

The final phase of the Social Sculpture endeavor deploys the key intervention or interventions at the scale needed to achieve the impact for which we’ve designed.

Now we are ready to “launch” the first prototypes of our cultural intervention or interventions. We do so ideally at a street or neighborhood scale.

We want to test the solution in real time so that we can improve our design, logistics, communications, and other aspects key to high impact in the minds and hearts of our target audiences.

Once we realize an e�ective intervention at a small scale, we scale up the intervention so that it can be most e�ective.

Historical examples have begun by planting one tree, then several dozen along one street, then many thousand throughout the town. Mayor Antanas Mockus’ tra�c death intervention in Bogotá began with 40 mimes, and once successful, deployed 400 more. When murals have been used, the project begins with a handful, then measures reactions, and builds out from there. We will follow these examples and scale up during this stage.

3.1 3.2

Before, as, and after we launch our interventions at significant scales, we publicly broadcast our narrative and messaging so as to increase interest, buy-in, and as much participation as possible. We continually survey participants and our broader audience, continue to engage key leaders and stakeholders, and otherwise grow the reach of the interventions.

The goal is that people understand what we’re doing. The element of surprise may be crucial, but it must be followed by a clear explanation of our purpose and transparent accountability.

3.3

Test Interventions at a Small Scale Launch Interventions at Large Scale Broadcast the Narrative

In addition, we document the whole proj-ect so that there are written, photograph-ic, and video records of the proceedings, the interventions, and its impact. This is necessary for publicity, learning, and the propagation of the idea of Social Sculp-ture as a plausible methodology for big impact in stuck social challenges.

To close, we assess our impact by qualita-tively and quantitatively measuring the key indicators established in the first phase, and include our findings in our documentation.

Lastly, we formally wrap up the project when the interventions are finished. This includes press announcements, team meetings, and adequate reflection on where we’ve been and possible next steps.

3.4 3.5

Documentation Measure Impact & Wrap Up

PHASE THREE: INTERVENTIONS AT SCALE

Every Social Sculpture Project is designed to make positive impact at a large scale. We work with “human scale solutions” in mind — solutions to systemic problems that improve the everyday lives of communities, families, and individuals.

CREATING IMPACT AT SCALE

Over the years whenever I have wanted to either understand or deepen my practice, I turn to Magenta. From Magenta I don't get cheap, easy or trite answers. I get fundamental insights that go to the heart of my enquiry. Magenta is an antidote to the waves of shallow fashion that sweep the world when it confronts something new. If you want to understand how best to respond to the challenges we face as individuals, as a society and as a species, I would urge you to work with Magenta.

Zaid HassanCEO, Roller StrategiesAuthor: The Social Labs Revolution

I have known Je� and Louisa for more than twenty years.   They are next generation luminaries who carry forward everything I have spent my life advancing: practical and spiritual insights into the nature of being human that provide meaningful ways forward on the most pressing and challenging issues of our times — paths that nourish the best in humanity across all boundaries, political, cultural and otherwise.”

Miha PogacnikCultural Ambassador of Slovenia

When I faced a conflict with a close colleague in a complex project that depended greatly on the two of us and the health of our relationship, we reached out to Louisa and Magenta to help us. Louisa facilitated a process through which we could understand and empathize with each other, and we managed to unblock our relationship and conclude the project successfully.

Mille BojerDirector, Reos Partners EuropeAuthor: Mapping Dialogue: Essential Tools for Social Change

If you’re interested in exploring Social Sculpture for your community, town, region, or country, contact us today or visit our website at magenta.fm. We’d love to talk with you about your goals, your challenges, and how we can help.

Magenta Studios LLCwww.magenta.fm +1 (415) 742.2301

hello@magenta.fm